Unlikely Advocates For Teen Killers: Victims' Families

Mary Johnson and Oshea Israel wait outside the Supreme Court for Tuesday's hearing on whether it is unconstitutional to sentence teenagers to life in prison without the possibility of parole. When he was 16, Israel shot and killed Johnson's son.

Sharletta Evans holds a photograph of her 3-year-old son Casson in Aurora, Colo., last July. Casson was killed in a drive-by shooting by two 15-year-olds.

Ed AndrieskiAP

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Originally published on March 24, 2012 10:32 pm

The Supreme Court heard arguments this week about the fate of 2,500 offenders who were sentenced as teenagers to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Seventy-nine of them were 13 or 14 when they committed their crimes.

Many prosecutors and family members of victims spoke out about the need to keep the sentences in place.

But in a small building cafeteria, just a few blocks from the Supreme Court, a different group of family members quietly came together. These were the families of teenagers who committed horrible crimes — and sitting next to them were the families of victims.

One man's mother had been killed by four teenage girls. Another man's son was killed by a teenage boy. Yet all of them want the court to find life without parole for juveniles unconstitutional.

It's not a group you often hear about. Many in the room said they frequently are unwilling to share their feelings about the issue because they have been accused of not missing their loved ones enough. On this day, there was enough sorrow in the room to fill an afternoon — but also enough forgiveness.

'He Was An Animal'

Mary Johnson said it took her more than a decade to get here. She was at work in Minnesota 19 years ago when her sister-in-law called and told her her 20-year-old son Laramiun had been shot and killed at a party.

Three days later, a detective called and said police had picked up a 16-year-old boy named Oshea Israel.

"He was an animal," Johnson says. "I wanted him charged as an adult with first-degree murder, imprisoned for the rest of his life. I mean I hated Oshea."

Sitting off to the side of the group, Johnson smiles and looks directly across the table — at Oshea Israel.

Asked if he killed Laramiun, Israel says quietly: "Yes, I did. Yes, I did. I was 16. He was 20. Neither one of us wanted to back down. And me being foolish enough to think that I held the most power just because I had a gun. He and I could have been best friends had we just taken the time to communicate."

Two Mothers Meeting

The families came together at the behest of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, a nonprofit that seeks to bring families and sometimes even perpetrators to the same table.

But how Oshea Israel and Mary Johnson ended up sitting here is mostly a testament to Johnson.

Israel was initially facing life in prison without parole, but the judge lessened the charge and sentenced him to 25 years, most of which he served. He got a few years off for good behavior. It was a long time since that night at the party. He says as a 16 year old, none of it really registered.

"All I could do was shut down and numb myself to it," Israel says. "It wasn't until years later that I started to make that connection, like — Wow, I really did do this. I was responsible for someone losing their life."

For a decade, Johnson struggled with grief. Then one day, she read a passage in a book about two mothers who had lost sons.

The mothers were angels. One of them said she would have taken her child's place on the cross if she could have.

"The other mother fell on one knee and said, 'Oh, well, you are she — the mother of Christ," Johnson says. "And the mother of Christ lifted her up, kissed the tear off a cheek and said, 'Tell me of your son, so I may grieve with you.' And she said, 'My son is Judas.'"

Johnson began to wonder if she could meet Israel's mother, but she knew in order to do that, she had to meet him.

Laying The Foundation

Early one morning in 2005, Johnson showed up at the Minnesota State Correctional Center in Stillwater.

Israel says he was ready if Johnson wanted to yell at him or even hit him. But what she said instead surprised him.

"I was like, 'You don't know me. You didn't know my son. My son didn't know you. We need to lay our foundation. We need to get to know one another,'" Johnson says. "And that's what we did."

They talked for two hours. Johnson had planned to visit Israel only once, but a moment at the end of the meeting seemed to bind them together: Israel asked Johnson if he could hug her.

"I felt like she just offered me her forgiveness," he says. "I had nothing else to offer her; at least I can show her some compassion."

They met in the middle and embraced.

"I tell you I had something going on in my feet physically, moving and stirring in my feet, and it just moved up and up," Johnson says. "I felt this whatever leave me. I knew that all that hatred and animosity and anger and the bitterness ... I had inside for 12 years was over."

Coming Face To Face

Theirs is not a surprising story in this cafeteria. Each of a dozen tables held families of perpetrators and families of victims.

At one table, Sharletta Evans tells the group that 17 years ago, her 3-year-old son was killed in a drive-by shooting by two 15-year-olds.

Across from her, Mona Schlautman nods her head. Her son was killed by an adult and a teenage accomplice.

"I knew he did not get a fair trial, but I didn't care at that time," Schlautman says. "I was just glad that he had been caught and locked up."

It takes a minute before Esa Mathis speaks up. Her son Ralph is serving life without parole for drug racketeering.

"My son, the seeds of wrong decisions were sewn a long time before those decisions were made," she says. "By the time my son was 15 years old, not only did he not have a father, but I had been married and divorced three times because of my own brokenness and not knowing how messed up I was. I had to own a part of that, you know?"

Trading Places

Everyone in the room wanted the teens to pay a price for their crimes, but for every story of trauma the victims' families shared, the teens' families seemed to describe an equal number of stories of trauma.

For many years Evans didn't care that the 15-year-olds who killed her son had hard lives, but that changed when she ran into the grandmother of one of the boys at a food bank where they were both volunteering. Evans says she realized either one could have been the other.

"Taking a look at my surviving son, who was 15, what if that was him?" she says. "If ... he took a life, would I want to see him spend the rest of his life in prison? And the answer was no."

Many say people don't understand that they're not trying to let the teens off the hook. What they want is for the teens to have a chance to one day make amends; getting to that place has brought them peace.

"The fact that my son died in my own arms and covered me with his own blood," Evans says, "I suffered. It wasn't nothing to take lightly the fact that he was only 3. He never made it to kindergarten. That only makes it harder. So no one can judge how much I've suffered."

Retribution And Rehabilitation

In the next few months, the Supreme Court will rule whether life without parole can be given to teenagers. Experts have argued that teenagers' brains are less developed — they are more impulsive and less able to weigh the consequences of their actions. But prosecutors say the sentence is an important tool.

"Thirty-nine states passed laws to provide that in the rarest of cases, life without parole for a juvenile can be a possibility," says Scott Burns, head of the National District Attorneys Association. Burns wrote a brief to the court arguing the sentence should not be overturned.

"If they were repealing all these laws, that would show ... a consensus the other way," he says, "but that's not happening in America."

Asked if he thinks a teenager's ability to change and express remorse is worth something to society, he said: "Well, that's the debate, isn't it? Is it the goal to rehabilitate someone to see if they change? Or is the goal to do justice for the victims and others?"

But for Mary Johnson, rehabilitation is retribution. She says she knows this because she sees it every day; not long after Israel was released from prison, he rented the apartment next door.

"I'm in his business," Johnson says, laughing.

But Israel says he doesn't mind. "I really know she's in my business out of care and concern, like she really wants to make sure I [am] the best person I can," he says. "She doesn't want to see me suffer. Just knowing that I caused her pain and she is the person who protects me from it, it's like — wow."

"He's suffered enough for what he's done," Johnson says. "Young people deserve to have a second chance. We all deserve to have a second chance, I believe."

Every day Israel checks in on Johnson. They spend their weekends together.

Johnson looks across the table at a man, no longer a child, who two decades ago killed her 20-year-old boy. To me, she says, Israel is like a son.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Transcript

LAURA SULLIVAN, HOST:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Laura Sullivan, in for Guy Raz.

The Supreme Court this week heard arguments about the fate of 2,500 offenders who were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole when they were teenagers. Seventy-nine of them were 13 or 14 years old when they committed their crimes. Many prosecutors and family members of victims spoke out about the need to keep the sentences in place.

But in a small building cafeteria, just a few blocks from the Supreme Court, a different group of family members quietly came together. Half of them were families of teenagers who committed horrible crimes.

GRACE WARREN: My name is Grace Warren. I'm from Illinois, and I have a son that's serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

ESSIE: Hi. I'm Essie(ph). My oldest son is serving a juvenile life without parole.

DEBRA BUCHANAN: Hi. My name is Debra Buchanan(ph), and my husband is serving life without parole.

SULLIVAN: And then there was the other half - family members of the teenagers' victims.

BILL PELKY: Hi. My name is Bill Pelky(ph). I live in Anchorage, Alaska. My grandmother was murdered by four teenage girls.

SURRELLS: People can change. I do believe they deserve a second chance.

FREDO: And I'm here to support Citizens for Second Chance.

SURRELLS: I believe that every child has a second chance.

SULLIVAN: This is not a group you often hear about, victims' families who want the teenage perpetrators to get an opportunity for parole, who wants to see sentences of life in prison for teens overturned. Many say they have often been unwilling to talk about the issue because they have been accused of not missing their loved ones enough. But on this day, in this room, there was enough sorrow to fill an afternoon, there was also enough forgiveness.

That's our cover story today: Families devastated by the actions of teenagers who want those teens to one day get a chance to make amends. People like Mary Johnson.

MARY JOHNSON: I don't remember going down eight flights on the elevator. I don't remember the short walk to the car. I don't even remember the short ride to my sister's home.

SULLIVAN: Nineteen years ago, Johnson was at work in Minnesota when her sister-in-law called to tell her her 20-year-old son Laramiun was dead. He had been shot to death. There was a fight at a party and a gun.

JOHNSON: It was two or three days after Laramiun was murdered, I got a call from the detective. And he's told me he had picked up a 16-year-old boy.

SULLIVAN: The boy's name was Oshea Israel.

JOHNSON: He was an animal. I wanted him charged as an adult with first-degree murder, imprisoned for the rest of his life.

SULLIVAN: Then you went through the court process, and you were in the courtroom, I'm sure, when he was sentenced.

JOHNSON: Yup, I was there every time there was something going on, because, I mean, I hated Oshea.

SULLIVAN: Sitting here, off to the side of the rest of the group, Mary Johnson smiles. She looks directly across the table at Oshea Israel.

Oshea, did you kill Laramiun?

OSHEA ISRAEL: Yes, I did. I was 16. He was 20.

SULLIVAN: Oshea Israel was initially facing life in prison without parole, but the judge lessened the charge and sentenced Israel to 25 years, most of which he served. He got a few years off for good behavior. It was a long time since that night at the party.

ISRAEL: Neither one of us wanted to back down. And me just being foolish enough to think that I held the most power and - because I had a gun. He and I probably could have been the best of friends had we just taken the time to communicate.

SULLIVAN: At 16, though, Israel says none of it was really registering.

ISRAEL: All I can do was kind of shut down and numb myself to it. It wasn't until years later that I started to make that connection, like, wow, you know, I really did do this. I really am responsible for someone losing their life.

SULLIVAN: Johnson and Israel, and everyone else in this room, came together this week at the urging of a nonprofit group called the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. But how Oshea Israel and Mary Johnson ended up sitting here at this table is mostly a testament to Johnson.

She struggled with her grief for more than a decade. But one day, she read a passage from a book about two mothers who had lost sons. The mothers were in heaven.

JOHNSON: And one mother said, I would have taken my child's place on the cross if I could have. And the other mother fell on one knee and she said, oh, well, you are she - the mother of Christ. And the mother of Christ lifted her up, kissed the tear from her cheek and said, tell me of your son, so I may grieve with you. And she said, my son is Judas Iscariot.

SULLIVAN: A small seed lodged itself in Mary Johnson's head.

JOHNSON: Over the years, I just kept getting this (unintelligible) two mothers. Bring these two mothers together. And I knew that in order to do that, I would have to meet Oshea.

ISRAEL: The case warden came to me and told me, well, hey, Mary Johnson wants to talk with you. You know, I had to really think about it, like, if my life was taken, I hope the person that took my life would - (unintelligible) man enough to take my life be man enough to face my mom and give her the closure that she need.

SULLIVAN: And so early one morning in 2005, Mary Johnson went to the prison in Stillwater, Minnesota, where Oshea Israel was incarcerated.

JOHNSON: Halfway up, I just broke down and I said, God, I cannot do this. I'm not ready to do this.

SULLIVAN: But she made it to the conference room and took a seat. Israel says he was ready if Mary Johnson wanted to yell at him or even hit him. But what she said instead surprised him.

JOHNSON: I said, look, I don't know you. You don't know me. You didn't know my son. My son didn't know you. I said, we need to lay our foundation. We need to get to know one another. And that's what we did.

SULLIVAN: They talked about Mary Johnson's son, about her pain, about Israel's remorse. And then they talked about their lives. They talked for two hours. Mary Johnson had only planned to visit Israel once. But a moment at the end of the meeting seemed to bind them together, when Oshea Israel asked Mary Johnson if he could hug her.

ISRAEL: I felt like, you know, she just offered me her forgiveness. I don't have anything to offer her. At least I can show her some compassion.

SULLIVAN: They met halfway and embraced.

JOHNSON: I tell you I had something going on in my feet physically, moving, stirring in my feet, and it just moved up and up and up. And I felt this whatever leave me. And I knew that I knew that all that hatred and the animosity and anger, the bitterness, I knew that all that stuff I had inside for 12 years, I just knew it was over. It was over with.

SULLIVAN: Theirs is not a surprising story in this cafeteria. Each of a dozen tables held families of perpetrators and families of victims, all talking to one another.

SULLIVAN: Sharletta Evans tells her table that 17 years ago, her 3-year-old son was killed in a drive-by shooting by two 14-year-olds and a 15-year-old. All three got life without parole. Across from her, Mona Schlautman nods her head. Her son was killed by an adult and an accomplice who was a teenager.

MONA SCHLAUTMAN: I knew he did not get a fair trial, but I didn't care at that time. I was just glad that he had been caught and locked up. And that's as far as I could really care.

SULLIVAN: It takes a minute before Esa Mathis speaks up. Her son Ralph is serving life without parole.

ESA MATHIS: My son, the seeds of wrong decisions were sewn a long time before those decisions were made. You know, by the time my son was 15 years old, not only did he not have a father, but I had been married and divorced three times because of my own brokenness and not knowing how messed up I was. I had to own a part of that.

SULLIVAN: Everyone in the room wants the teens to pay a price for their crimes for however many decades in prison. But for every story of trauma victims' families shared, the teens' families seemed to describe an equal number of stories of trauma in the perpetrators' lives.

Experts have argued that teenagers' brains are less developed than those of adults, so they are more impulsive and less able to weigh the consequences of their actions. But prosecutors say the sentence is an important tool. I spoke with Scott Burns, who was head of the National Association of District Attorneys. He says the sentence is rarely used. Ninety-nine percent of juveniles do get parole. But he says sometimes it's needed.

SCOTT BURNS: Thirty-nine states passed laws - and some of them recently - to provide that in the rarest of cases, life without parole for a juvenile be a possibility. If they were repealing all of these laws, that would likewise show a consensus the other way, but that's not happening in America.

SULLIVAN: Do you think that someone who commits such a heinous crime at such a young age has the ability to change and express remorse over the decades to come? And do you think that's worth anything?

BURNS: Well, that's the debate, isn't it? Is it the goal to rehabilitate someone to see if they change? Or is it also the goal to do justice to the victims and others, and there is some retribution about this for paying for that crime?

SULLIVAN: But if you ask Mary Johnson, she says for her, rehabilitation is retribution. She says she knows this because she sees it every day in the apartment next to hers; not long after Oshea Israel was released from prison, he moved in to the apartment next door.

JOHNSON: I'm in his business. I get on his case because he won't take my garbage out.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

JOHNSON: You know?

ISRAEL: Or she's in my business - I really know that she's in my business out of care and concern. And she doesn't want to see me suffer or go do anything that would cause me any kind of harm or pain. Knowing that I caused her pain, but she is the very person that protects me from it, it's just like, wow.

SULLIVAN: Mary, you're crying.

JOHNSON: Yup, that's true. He's suffered enough for what he's done, you know? Young people deserve to have a second chance. We all deserve to have a second chance.

SULLIVAN: Every day, Oshea Israel stops by to check in on Mary Johnson. They spend their weekends together. Johnson looks across the table at a man, no longer a child, who two decades ago killed her 20-year-old boy. To me, she says, Oshea is like a son.

The Supreme Court will rule in the next few months on whether life without parole for teenagers is constitutional. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.